We All Live in Bubbles

Hungry cattle of Wardha waiting to be fed.

"Why are those who are feeding us dying of hunger and committing suicide?" And which role do we play in it?

In May 2013, I joined SRISTI to Wardha, a district in Maharshtra, where most of India‘s farmer suicides were and maybe are still taking place. We walked from village to village for several days because we wanted to meet the people of this region and understand their hardships and their way of living.

One life dominating aspect there is that it is a very hot region, during the day temperatures rise up to 50°C, there‘s not enough water, animals starve and people, i.e. mostly the women and girls walk many hours per day to fetch water for their day to day lives. Walking in that region, in that heat, makes you understand only slightly how difficult life can be, but it was our attempt at showing solidarity.

Another problem of this region, next to the farmer suicides, is the killing of baby girls. Girls, in India, are often seen as plight because when they grow up, they will not provide for the family but traditionally need to be married off, almost every time involving the payment of dowry, which the families cannot afford. Some women we met were involved in hard labour, such as brick making or working on construction sites.

A friend of mine, Purvi Vyas, suggested a documentary called Nero‘s Guests, which can easily be found on YouTube and which shows P Sainath‘s work on documenting, understanding and reporting the situation of rural India and farmer suicides, and I highly recommend watching it to everyone who would like to get a clearer picture of the situation of farmers, on why they are ending their lives, and on the role we, i.e. also the people in Europe, play in it. It's finally a documentary depicting some of the India I saw in those three years of living and working there but am still not able to fully put into words.

When people ask me „How was India?“ I say „Very beautiful and very ugly. It‘s complex. I‘m in love with it and I hate it. How to describe it. The longer I think about it, the more aware I become that I know too less to make any judgments. I cannot describe it, there are at least six, seven, eight different sides to everything I would like to explain. All I know is that there‘s a huge and growing disparity and all of us are living in bubbles. Maybe we need these bubbles to stay sane. Maybe they are the reason we go mad.“

See for yourself, watch this documentary, it‘s worth watching. It is a good depiction of the India and of the world I perceive, which unfortunately leaves me speechless more often than it makes me speak up.

Further Links:

Nero's Guests, documentary film by Deepa Bhatia
P Sainath on twitter
People's Archive of Rural India
Facebook page of Purvi Vyas, organic farmer located in Ahmedabad, India
SRISTI - Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions, Ahmedabad, India
A Dim Flame of Gandhian Legacy - SRISTI Shodh Yatra Report

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YOLO - Genocide in Syria

Image: www.genocideinsyria.org

I wished the children depicted in this image were sleeping and could be woken up to run around and play. But that’s just wishful thinking.

This photograph published by "Genocide In Syria" just popped up on my Facebook wall and though I don’t like to share pictures that depict cruelty and atrocities, I do it this time, and I’m sorry if I intrude your daily activities with this and might overstep anybody’s capability of what s/he can or is willing to take or deal with.

There’s no blood here, no explicit depiction of wounds, no bodies torn apart, just a room full of human beings, one could almost think they were asleep if it wasn’t for something disturbingly cold in the way the bodies are arranged, legs spread widely so they all fit, faces turned to the wall, a white sheet covering some of them.

The picture's caption says these children were killed by chemical weapons, and i don’t hv any proof whether that’s true or might be misleading and aiming at influencing people’s thought processes. Just I know and deeply feel that, whatever the context might be, there’s just everything wrong with a world in which creatures who are responsible for this kind of horror can walk around freely, live a good life and are not being held responsible for their oppressive ideologies, illusionary entitlements, lethal orders, actions and inactions. How fucked up and self-absorbed must one be not to feel any remorse in light of such crimes?

One can just say it’s war and there’s nothing normal about war, but no, this is not just about war anymore, this is a sickness, a rottenness down to the core of this planet’s ruling elite and the accompanying construct we call society or maybe even humanity. And all of us are a part of it. We put a blind eye again and again when it comes to things that are too horrendous to be integrated into our own comfort zones and realities.

At a personal level, everyone has own problems to overcome. All of us have just one life, and we strive and struggle to live it to the fullest or at least be comfortable and somehow seek fulfillment or happiness, maybe find and follow a passion, found a family, travel the world, whatever it may be. But we are doing it on the back of the lives of these dead children and all those others who will never hv a good life but live in poverty, in war, in slavery, in depreciation, isolation, destruction, torture or are already dead or going to die forcefully and in anxiety and pain in the coming minutes, hours, days, weeks, .... it seems to never come to an end.

I’m clueless how we can still look at ourselves and think we are innocent or that there’s justification for the way we live, consume, exploit and destroy. We all live in denial and we know it and pretend it’s not our fault but the fault of others or of the so called system.

These dead children are one symptom of what’s wrong with humanity. I’m ashamed to be part of this humanity. It depresses me. It makes me angry, sad, mad and oftentimes feel paralyzed and hopeless. Not because I prefer apathy and a mindset of nothing can be done about it. No, I think every tiny action in the right direction counts and helps. I also don’t like to play blaming games. I’m as guilty as everyone else and that’s not a solution.

Just I wished we could somehow manage to find alternative ways of doing things, treating each other, organizing society and building communities based on freedom, tolerance, solidarity, respect and kindness in a way that such words are not any longer just hollow phrases but an integral part of what humanity represents.

So, yes, a picture of a room filled with dead children. That’s very sad and horrible, we think, and then we scroll down and go on with our lives.
What on earth must happen that we finally open our eyes and change?

Further Links:

Website of Genocide in Syria

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